Barack Obama unveiled his long-awaited decision on troop levels in Afghanistan. An extra 30,000 American soldiers will be deployed to fight al-Qaeda and the Taliban. This is a lower number than requested by General Stanley McChrystal, the commander on the ground, but Mr Obama called on other countries to make up some of the difference. He set a tentative date of mid-2011 to start pulling American troops out of Afghanistan. [03/12]
The European Union’s Lisbon treaty came into force amid a row over jobs in the European Commission. France’s Nicolas Sarkozy called the British the “big losers” after Michel Barnier, a former French foreign minister, was put in charge of the single market, including financial services. [03/12]
Russia’s president, Dmitry Medvedev, released the draft of a European security treaty that could, in effect, let Russia veto future NATO expansion. NATO members reacted with silence. [03/12]
A militant Islamist group based in the north Caucasus claimed responsibility for two bombs that derailed the Moscow to St Petersburg express, killing 26 people. This was Russia’s worst terrorist attack outside the north Caucasus for five years. [03/12]
Just days after the International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN’s nuclear watchdog, scolded Iran for its nuclear activities, the Islamic Republic announced that it would build another ten uranium-enrichment plants; the Iranians said they might start building some of them within two months. Western countries trying to curb Iran’s nuclear plans pressed China and Russia to intensify economic sanctions against Iran. [03/12]
Asif Zardari, Pakistan’s president, handed control of the country’s nuclear weapons to the prime minister, Yusuf Raza Gilani. The move was seen as a sop to the president’s critics, as an amnesty protecting him and others from possible prosecution on corruption charges expired. It has little impact on the management of the nuclear arsenal. [03/12]
Barack Obama delighted environmentalists by deciding that he would, after all, attend the UN summit on climate change in Copenhagen next month (he had already scheduled a trip to Oslo to pick up the Nobel peace prize). Mr Obama will offer provisional cuts to the United States’ emissions of an initial 17% from 2005 levels by 2020. Congress, which is stalled on a similar proposal, would need to agree. China is sending Wen Jiabao, the prime minister, to Copenhagen, where he is expected to pledge to reduce China’s “carbon intensity”. [26/11]
There was some good news on AIDS. A UN report said the rate of new HIV infections is down by 17% compared with 2001, and the death rate from the disease has dropped by 10% over the past five years. The ubiquity of antiviral drugs is one important reason for the improvement. [26/11]
Binyamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, said he would suspend building Jewish settlements on the West Bank for ten months in a bid to restart peace negotiations with the Palestinians. But his offer excluded East Jerusalem, “natural growth” in existing settlements and buildings already under construction. Not good enough, said the Palestinians. [26/11]
Not for the first time, it was reported that an agreement was near that would see the release of an Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit, captured by the Palestinian Islamists of Hamas three years ago, in exchange for several hundred Palestinian prisoners. [26/11]
A new report on Iran’s nuclear work by the International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN’s nuclear guardian, doubted Iran’s claim that a newly discovered uranium-enrichment plant being built inside a mountain near Qom is a recent, stand-alone civilian site. Building started five years earlier than Iran claims, so inspectors worry that there could be other hidden sites to support this one. [19/11]
Radovan Karadzic entered the dock for the first time at his war-crimes trial in The Hague. Previously the former Bosnian Serb leader, who is defending himself, had refused to appear as he does not accept the court’s legitimacy. [05/11]
The prosecution opened its case against Radovan Karadzic at the start of his trial for war crimes before a tribunal in The Hague. The former Bosnian Serb leader stands accused on 11 charges, including genocide for the massacre of 8,000 Muslim men at Srebrenica in 1995. He outraged his alleged victims by refusing to leave custody and attend the proceedings. [29/10]
A majority of countries on the UN’s Human Rights Council voted for a resolution to send its Goldstone report on the Gaza war to the UN Security Council for possible referral to the International Criminal Court. The United States and five other countries voted against the resolution, which was critical of Israel. Unusually, Britain and France withheld from voting. [23/10]
